Ben Carson has history of clueless comments about slavery before being sworn in as HUD secretary

Even if you were inclined to give Ben Carson a pass for his clueless comments about slavery the other day, consider this:

It wasn't Carson's first offense — and last time it was even worse.

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Years before he ignited a national firestorm for equating slavery with immigration, Carson, President Trump's new secretary of Housing and Urban Development, made another throwaway remark that trivialized America's original sin.

That time, instead of linking slavery and immigration, Carson compared human bondage in America with a medical plan known as Obamacare.

"You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery," Carson, who is African American, said in 2013 in remarks at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.

U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson's offensive comments about slaves and immigrants wasn't his only faux pas. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

"And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control."

To be clear, slaves — the people of African descent, who were stolen from their families and packed in ships like shoes in a box and brought to America against their will to work for free — never had health care, mandated or otherwise.

They also didn't have vacation time, a vision plan, paid leave or school.

But that wasn't the oversight that made Carson's first foray into the subject so egregious.

What made the Obamacare reference worse was that it featured a black man putting another black man in the abusive role of slave master.

We should have been even more offended at the time. But we weren't. That's because Carson didn't have the stature — and the influence — that he has now.

In the days since Carson spoke of "other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships," his supporters have relentlessly reminded us that President Obama made a similar comparison.

"Certainly, it wasn't easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves," Obama said at a naturalization ceremony in 2015.

Carson's offensive Obamacare comment was worse when featuring a black man putting another black man in the abusive role as slave master. (Bettmann/Bettmann Archive)

"There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more."

The difference in Obama's take is that he at least acknowledged the evil of slavery, and its lasting effect.

Carson, meanwhile, spoke of slaves who "worked even longer, even harder for less."